Using the mixer

As you get into working with larger sessions, you'll find that getting a goodmix will become very important.Not only will you need to be able to hear everything in the right place, but youmay also need to be able to mute certain tracks that you're not working with, ormaybe even create groups to make your mixing process a little bit easier.So let's open the Mixer with Shift+Command+M or Shift+Ctrl+M, and here we can seethe 8 tracks that we've previously imported.We already did a brief tour of the Mixer, but let's go over a few things again.So from top to bottom, we have our EQ section.You can choose the different types of EQ, control the different elements of theGain, the Q and the Frequency. We can insert plug-ins.

We can use Auxs to send to Reverbs or Delays or external processing, and wecan choose our output and input, which in this case is inactive because of our hardware setup.Below the Output, you'll see a little single or double circle, whichindicates whether the track is a mono or stereo track, and you can changethis on a new track.What this really affects, though, is which type of plug-in you'll be able toinsert on that channel in the Mixer.Below that we have our Panning, which only shows up when we have a stereo output selected.We have our Fader Level or our Track Gain, and we have Solo, Mute, and Record.

We can also rename tracks right here in the Mixer.As you can see, we've already dropped the level of our instrumental so that wecould hear our vocals in balance with that instrumental without having tochange the level of our vocal.And a reminder, the reason that we did that is because when we export audiofiles, they will reflect the volume level, EQ, and insert effects whenexporting individual files.So just be careful when you do make changes to your mix in Melodyne, you maywant to remove or reset that before exporting, if you're mixing in another DAW.That said, you can use Melodyne's Mixer to alter your audio by applying theseeffects so that you don't have to use an external DAW.

With the Mixer, we can also configure a few more advanced options.Under the Configure menu you can choose to Hide EQs if you're not using them.You can also choose to Hide Inserts if you're not using plug-ins, and to Hide AuxSends, if you're not going to be using those.Here you can also create a Group Track, and the way you use Group Tracks inMelodyne is by first creating the Group Track and then assigning the properoutput on all of the tracks that you want to go through that group.For example, if we wanted all of our Background Vocals to go through Group1--which in this case let's name BG Vocals--we would assign the output of all of our Background Vocal tracks to BG Vox orBG Vocals, and now what we can do is affect what we hear on all of thebackgrounds through the Mixer by simply changing one Fader level or Muting onechannel, and this is really handy because it allows you to get the balance youwant between multiple tracks if you are going to use the Mixer for that andthen make overall adjustments with just one channel.

So let's really quickly listen to something so we can hear it through the Mixer.So I'm going to switch back to my Arrangement window, I am going to locateour background section here, and again we haven't tuned any of this yet,but let's have a listen.(music playing)So you can hear... (music playing)...that using my Group fader or Mute... (music playing)...I can affect the mix of all of the background vocals that aregoing through that background vocal group.

Likewise, if we wanted to insert a Reverb or an Aux Send, we just select the Auxand choose our effect.We can use the built-in Reverb that comes with Melodyne if we want, and ourfirst Aux is automatically added.Now you'll notice that below that a second Aux pops up.So if you wanted to add another Aux you can.You'll also notice that a second Aux is also added on the Mixer.So let's say we wanted to add some Reverb to our Lead Vocal, we can justselect our Aux, set a level, and we can do the same for our Background Vocalgroup if we want as well, and un- checking the button next to the Aux isessentially muting the Aux.

So we can listen to this with a little reverb if we want.(music playing)So if we uncheck this box, we won't hear the reverb anymore.(music playing)We can also add an instrument track if we want to use Melodyne'smelody to control an instrument, and we can do that here from the Configure menuby choosing Instrument Tracks and Add Instrument Track, and then from thePlug-in window we would choose the instrument that we want to assign.

For additional information about the master section options in the Mixer, youcan refer back to the video in Chapter 2 called Exploring the Mixer window.

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Author

Released

5/14/2012

In this course, author Skye Lewin explores how to harness the power of the leading pitch correction software, Melodyne. The course begins with the installation and setup process, and includes recommendations on choosing the best workflow and preference settings for your project. The lessons also demonstrate how to get audio into Melodyne, whether importing existing files or recording new tracks; how to arrange a new session; and how to edit the audio and export the corrected tracks.